Deepest Condolences
by Pegasus
Summary: Set in the office of 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'.  Post DH, therefore  as previously  contains ... YES!  Spoilers for DH.


**Disclaimer bit**

Not mine, JKR's/Warner Bros. property. No financial gain, purely for fun, wah wah wah wah. Contains spoilers for 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. Don't say you've not been told.

**Deepest Condolences**

_It is only now, as the wizarding and Muggle worlds begin to return to some sort of normality, that we truly begin to feel the losses and sacrifices of the recent war against Voldemort. What a truly liberating thing it is to say that name and fear it no longer._

_Voldemort._

_What once was Taboo is now an obituary._

_Everywhere you look you see families devastated by their losses. Every time you pass a cemetery, there is another funeral taking place. Everywhere you look there is sadness. Yet there is also such great hope for the future._

_Never let us forget those who gave their lives so that we, the humble few, may continue to live._

George Weasley folded the _Prophet_ and set it on the table. He'd not wanted to read the entire article, but it had somehow caught his attention. He sat in the back office of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes shop on Diagon Alley. From where he sat, he could see the front door of the shop.

Not that anybody was likely to come in, not with the door still locked and bolted with the piece of black-edged card in the window.

_Closed until further notice due to bereavement._

Old fashioned? Yes, perhaps, but it had somehow seemed the right thing to do. His mother had patted his cheek fondly and said it was a lovely gesture. Then she'd cried.

She seemed to cry a lot these days. His father had quietly told the family that she would get over the loss of Fred in time. She had to shed her grief through tears, just as each of the family dealt with his loss in their own way.

Charlie had gone back to his dragons. Bill had Fleur. Ginny was spending most of her time with Harry just as Hermione had stolen most of Ron's attentions away. Percy had shown himself to be amazingly good at comforting his parents. Everyone had someone. Except him.

Today had been the first day he'd found the courage to come into the shop since the day of the final battle at Hogwarts. The day he could only think of as the very worst of his entire life. The day he'd lost his best friend, his partner in crime, his business partner.

His brother.

The place just didn't feel right without him. There was a very definite Fred-shaped void in his life and no matter how kind the words others spoke may have been, that void could never be filled again. The funeral had been hard, but somehow the Weasley family had understood that Fred, funny, free-spirited Fred, would not have wanted weeping and wailing over his grave. Instead, the family gathered at the kitchen table and took turns in reading jokes from his favourite volume, "A Thousand Cringeworthy Groaners For All Occasions – Funeral Edition".

With much ceremony, the siblings had watched as their parents had removed Fred's hand from the Weasley family clock and lay it in a velvet case which then went into Mrs. Weasley's near-legendary 'Box of Stuff'.

Funny how seeing his brother's clock hand go in there had finally curbed George's curiosity as to its contents. If it was that sort of thing that went in there, he suspected he didn't want to know any more.

He reached forward to the desk and picked up the pile of post that had been waiting patiently for his return. Listlessly, he sifted through it. Largely, they were addressed to 'The Proprietor' (a name that Fred had always insisted sounded like a particularly bad 1970's comic book villain) or simply 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'. Some, though, were addressed to 'Mr G Weasley and Mr F Weasley' – and every single one of them reminded him acutely of his loss.

Fred had always been the one who had dealt with the mail. He'd had a head for numbers that George had never had. George had been the one to come up with the wild ideas: Fred had been the one who costed them out, lead the research and ordered the appropriate ingredients.

George had been threatened under pain of death never to reveal to anybody Fred's inner accountant.

The faintest glimmer of a smile flickered across George's face as he continued to sift through and then opened one that was addressed simply to 'George'.

_Dear George._

_I hope you don't mind me calling you George, I felt that 'Mr. Weasley' was too impersonal in the circumstances. Also, I remember that when I visited your shop once, I called you that, and you said to call you George, as Mr. Weasley was, in fact your father._

_I am the mother of three little boys and my youngest son always used to insist we visit your shop every time we came to Diagon Alley. Especially in those difficult times before the war truly kicked off. Your shop always raised our spirits, always made us laugh and my little boy would tick off the days on his calendar until he could visit again._

_I read in the 'Daily Prophet' of your tragic loss. Words are so useless at a time like this; they all seem hollow and empty and sometimes meaningless. Many people will say how sorry they are, how awful it must be for you and they will probably mean it, but not really know. _

_I do know, George, my husband was killed during the purges. My little boy has not smiled once since that day and I promised him that as soon as 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes' was open again, we would go and buy him the biggest box of Dungbombs we could manage._

_I hope, in the wake of your loss, that you will continue to bring happiness to people. To lose one Weasley is a great tragedy. To lose both would be criminal._

_My very deepest condolences to you and your family._

_Maureen Barrett (Mrs)_

By the time he had reached the end, George's cheeks were damp with tears and he lifted his hand to whisk them away. He set the letter down on the desk and stared up at the ceiling.

_Ah, Fred_, he thought. _What's the point of carrying this on? It was meant to be OUR thing. Not mine, not yours. Ours._

He looked down at the desk again and ran a finger across Mrs. Barrett's letter.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Barrett," he said, out loud. "I can't do this. Not on my own."

He opened the drawer and took out the hand-written notice that announced with immediate effect, the shop would be closing down and further announced in large, almost irritating jocular letters, that Everything Must Go! Exclamation mark and all.

Exactly what he'd do with himself once the shop was closed remained in question. That was tomorrow's problem. For now, he had to bring this little business venture to a close.

He folded up Mrs. Barrett's letter and put it back in its envelope, setting it on the top of the pile and go to his feet, heading for the door of the shop.

What he saw there made him double-take.

His brother was standing just outside, talking to what looked like a ridiculously large crowd of people. His _brother_.

All he could do was stand and stare. It was the very last thing he had expected to see here.

_Am I going crazy?_

George knocked on the glass of the door and his brother turned around and smiled broadly, pointing at the sign in the window and then gesturing at the huge crowd who looked pleased to see George standing there.

_Open the door_, he mouthed through the glass.

With great reluctance, George took the key from his pocket and opened the door. He almost immediately got caught up in the jostle and hubbub of people who streamed in past him and immediately began browsing.

He stared at them, then turned around to his brother who was beaming like an idiot.

"What in the name of all that is good and holy are _you_ doing here?"

"I figured you needed someone to help you run this place," came the reply. "I know that you never had much of a head for numbers and, well, I LIKE organising things. And besides. That lady over there _really_ wanted you to open up. She was so polite about it. Mrs. Barrett, she said her name was."

George shook his head in disbelief. "Percy Weasley, you're just one big surprise after another lately, aren't you?"

"You'd better believe it. Where's the office?" Percy rubbed his hands together in glee and almost immediately disappeared into the office, where George imagined him quite literally swimming through a stack of unpaid invoices like an exceptionally bizarre and badly choreographed 1950's aquatic film. Nose plugs and _everything_.

For the first time in weeks he suddenly remembered what it was to laugh. He chuckled, lightly.

"Excuse me? Mr. Weasley?" A hesitant voice came from behind him.

"Call me George," he said, automatically. "Mr. Weasley is my dad."

He looked at the bit of paper in his hand and folded it up. He would give it to his mother that night. It could go in the Box of Stuff – along with the bereavement card that he removed from the window.

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was back in business.

© S Watkins, 2007


End file.
